XP is still Vista’s biggest competitor

A survey by Forrester Research has suggested that Microsoft may be force to extend its support for Windows XP past its current April 2009 deadline if business attitudes to Vista do not change.

The report highlighted that 32 per cent of companies surveyed had said that they had no plans to upgrade to Vista before the end of 2008, while a further 17 per cent said that they would not be installing Vista until at least 2009-2010.

Analyst Benjamin Gray said that the biggest problem Microsoft was facing was that: "companies had been hugely successful in standardizing on Windows XP."

He also added that competition from Apple, Novell or Red Hat was irrelevant and unrealistic, saying that Vista’s ascension to being the world’s primary operating system for businesses was not: "a matter of if, but of when and how."

The survey also revealed that the majority of companies are not holding off on Vista because of stability worries, although the do factor; rather the majority were holding off because of continuing incompatibility with many of the software systems they use.